A lamp for the dark worl.., p.50
A Lamp for the Dark World, page 50
34. The Jain monk, writes Pushpa Prasad, was able to win over the brahmins: ‘Vijayasen Suri proved from the Jain scriptures the falseness of the accusation and convinced the Brahmans, Shaikhs (Muslim scholars), the emperor and others, that the Jain conception was similar to that expounded in the Samkhya philosophy of the Brahmans.’ See Pushpa Prasad, ‘Akbar and the Jains’, in Akbar and His India, ed. Irfan Habib (Oxford University Press, 1997).
35. The historians add that Akbar asked Guru Amar Das to pray for him during the siege of Chittorgarh. See editors’ introduction to Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate.
36. Iqtidar Alam Khan, ‘The Nobility under Akbar and the Development of His Religious Policy, 1560–80’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1/2, April 1968.
37. Ibid.
38. Munis Faruqui argues that this final change in Akbar’s policies (not only with regard to the jizya but the rule of his diverse realm) was influenced far more than is usually admitted by his half-brother’s defeat (in 1581) and subsequent death (in 1585): ‘Once rid of the menacing shadow cast by Mirza Hakim, Akbar no longer felt compelled to tailor his imperial initiatives to woo disparate political and religious constituencies. Indeed, the death of Mirza Hakim, I argue, is a hitherto overlooked element in the exploration of how and why Akbar conclusively moved from a pro-Islamic stance to the liberal and eclectic stance for which he is widely remembered.’ Munis D. Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 48, no. 4, 2005.
39. ‘He was singular for theoretical and practical knowledge’, writes Abul Fazl (The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3).
40. Translator’s note in The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1.
41. Ibid.
42. Translator’s introduction to The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1.
43. Translator’s note in Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe. Richard Eaton notes that Humayun, too, had adopted the ritual of a darshan at dawn – ‘showing his face to the public just as the sun showed itself to the king’. Humayun also gave pride of place to the sun on his ‘courtly carpet’, where it was coloured gold and placed at the very centre of all planets. Richard M. Eaton, India in the Persianate Age: 1000–1765 (Allen Lane, 2019).
44. The figure of the eternally ‘oppressed brahman’ makes more than one cameo appearance in the chronicles of Akbar’s reign. In 1586, one of Akbar’s generals, Qasim Khan, marched into Srinagar and discovered yet another prophecy of this kind. Some 900 years previously, the story goes, Kashmir was ruled by ‘wine-sellers’ – a community of low or no caste, presumably, for a brahmin called Shiv Dat was terribly ‘distressed by the vogue of the polluted’. Shiv Dat decided to summon a ‘baital’, a spirit, for help. This was no small matter: the ritual involved sitting on a human corpse by the light of a lamp lit in a human skull, burning human fat while strewing human teeth upon the dead body. At this, writes Abul Fazl, ‘if the heart of the necromancer does not fail him, the corpse begins to move’. Shiv Dat had made all the arrangements and left the corpse at a tanner’s house. As it happens, the baital arrived before the brahmin’s return, and told the tanner that the current ‘oppressors’ would be succeeded by Kayasths, then Muslims, and finally, at the eighth generation of Chak rulers, there would come one whose ‘thoughts, actions and speech are devoted to the accomplishment of the Divine Will’. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
45. Srivastava, A Short History of Akbar the Great (1542–1605).
46. P. P. Sinha, Raja Birbal: Life and Times (Janaki Prakashan, 1980).
47. See Prasad, ‘Akbar and the Jains’. The monk went on: ‘Thieves and robbers were conspicuous by their absence in his empire. His glory was as white as the moon because he had defeated all his enemies. His religious zeal never made him intolerant.’
Akbar seems to have held the Jains in equally high esteem. A Sanskrit inscription on the Adiswara temple in Kathiawar, Gujarat, is quoted by Monserrate’s editors to demonstrate the Jains’ achievements in Akbar’s court. The inscription records how, in 1582, a Jain teacher called Hiravijaya persuaded Sahi Akbbara ‘to issue an edict forbidding the slaughter of animals for six months, to abolish the confiscation of the property of deceased persons, the Sujijia tax (the Jizia) and a Sulka, to set free many captives, snared birds and animals, to present Satrunjaya to the Jainas, to establish a Jaina library, and to become a saint like King Srenika (Bimbasara c. 582–554 BC)’. See editors’ introduction to Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate.
48. Allison Busch, ‘Portrait of a Raja in a Badshah’s World: Amrit Rai’s Biography of Man Singh (1585)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 55, 2012.
49. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship & Sainthood in Islam (Columbia University Press, 2012).
50. Ibid.
51. Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’.
52. Translator’s note in The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1.
53. In this reply, Man Singh may also have explained, succinctly if unwittingly, the difficulty that the Jesuit Fathers, far from court, would face in finding converts. Akbar had long promised the various Jesuit missions that came to him that the Fathers would be free to live and proselytize in his realm, but it was clearly not an easy promise to keep – Akbar only issued a farman to this effect in 1602, two decades after the first Jesuit mission arrived in Fatehpur. It was also in 1602, shortly before the edict was issued, that the third Jesuit mission tells a story of conversion in Lahore, which sheds some light on the troubles the Fathers faced in recruiting a new flock in Hindustan.
It all began when a young brahmin pandit in Lahore was convinced by Father Pigneiro to adopt the Christian faith. The pandit’s family was terribly upset (as the Fathers write, ‘the Brachmanes, who are, more than all others given to idolatry, exhibited the greater resentment when any of their children became Christians’). The whole clan arrived to take their son back home, the pandit’s mother throwing herself at his feet, while the young man waved a sword above his head (‘he was . . . new to the teaching of our Saviour’, write the Fathers, and hadn’t quite grasped Christ’s message of non-violence). Eventually, the family left, with the pandit’s mother flinging her grandchild upon the steps of the church in despair. A few days later, when his clan came back, the pandit flung his janeu, sacred thread, at his mother in return, and cut off his topknot. At their wits’ end, the family complained to the sadr of Lahore, accusing Father Pigneiro of eating human flesh, stealing children and practising black magic. The sadr was unable to bring about any peace between the two parties, so the pandit was taken to a Hindu ‘Coxi’, possibly ‘qazi’, judge. Thousands lined the streets of Lahore and peered from balconies, ‘many having shut up their shops that they might come and see what was taking place’. The Hindu qazi had collected funds for the pandit to bathe in the Ganga and wash away his sins, but the young convert showed little appreciation for his efforts. Indeed, he spat in disgust and – here echoing the essence, if not the spirit, of Man Singh’s argument against Akbar’s ‘religion’ declared: ‘It is a very strange thing that when any Gentile wishes to become a logue [yogi], or a Mahometan, there is none to stand in his way; but when he wishes to become a Christian, it seems that the Devil and hell are leagued against him, to turn him from his purpose.’
The pandit stuck to his guns, though he had to give up all claims to his inheritance to do so. And so ended ‘the most noteworthy episode in the lives of the Christians during the year 1602’. See Du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits.
54. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe.
55. See Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir’, and Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince’.
56. Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, vol. 6, trans. W. M. Thackston.
Chapter 14
1. Abdul Qadir Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh (Selections from Histories), vol. 2, trans. W. H. Lowe (first published 1884–98; Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 1990).
2. ‘For this reason His Majesty, in imitation of the usages of these Lamahs, limited the time he spent in the Haram, curtailed his food and drink, but especially abstained from meat.’ Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Abu’l Fazl, The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl (completed by Inayatullah), vol. 3, trans. Henry Beveridge (First published 1902–1939; Low Price Publications, 2017).
5. Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, vol. 6, trans. W. M. Thackston (Murty Classical Library of India, Harvard University Press, 2020).
6. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
7. Fr. Antonio Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J. on His Journey to the Court of Akbar, trans. J. S. Hoyland, annotations S. N. Banerjee (Oxford University Press, 1922).
8. For several months after he came to Punjab in the second half of 1585, Akbar camped by the Indus – a lot of it at ‘the blacksmiths’ shop in looking after gun-making’, writes Abul Fazl – either awaiting an opportunity to cross over to Turan or discouraging any movement eastwards from Abdullah Khan. When Akbar resumed his march in mid-1586, his nobility thought they were heading home to Fatehpur. It must have come as a rude shock when Akbar led them to Lahore instead.
9. William Foster, ed., Early Travels in India: 1583–1619 (Low Price Publications, 1921).
10. Munis D. Faruqui, ‘The Forgotten Prince: Mirza Hakim and the Formation of the Mughal Empire in India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 48, no. 4, 2005.
11. Richards writes that ‘For the Indo-Muslim rulers of Hindustan prior to Akbar . . . possession and political domination of Delhi was of supreme importance . . . Akbar reversed this fixed concern, fusing, instead, all authority within himself and ultimately within the dynasty which succeeded him.’ See J. F. Richards, ‘The Formulation of Imperial Authority under Akbar and Jahangir’, in The Mughal State: 1526–1750, eds. Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Oxford University Press, 1998).
12. ‘The Happy Sayings of His Majesty’, in Abu’l Fazl, The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 3, trans. Col. H. S. Jarrett (First published 1927; Low Price Publications, 2014).
13. Peter Hardy, ‘Abul Fazl’s Portrait of the Perfect Padshah: A Political Philosophy for Mughal India – or a Personal Puff for a Pal?’ Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, vols 1 and 2, ed. Christian W. Troll (Vikas, 1985).
14. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
15. Afzal Husain, The Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir: A Study of Family Groups (Manohar Publishers, 1999).
16. Hardy, ‘Abul Fazl’s Portrait of the Perfect Padshah’.
17. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
18. P. P. Sinha, Raja Birbal: Life and Times (Janaki Prakashan, 1980).
19. Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, vol. 6, trans. W. M. Thackston. Jafar Beg was a Persian refugee whose brother, Ghiyas Beg, followed him to Hindustan, bringing with him a newborn daughter called Mihrunissa – the future empress Nurjahan.
20. Sinha, Raja Birbal.
21. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
22. Ibid. The story of Birbar’s fatal campaign that follows is based on Abul Fazl’s account.
23. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe.
24. Ibid.
25. Abul Fazl estimates the Mughal losses at 500, Nizamuddin at 8000. Khafi Khan, a Mughal historian of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, puts the figure at 40,000 to 50,000 (Translator’s note in The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3).
26. Sinha, Raja Birbal.
27. Ibid.
28. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe.
29. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, vol. 6, trans. W. M. Thackston.
33. ‘I asked the date of his decease from the Old Man of Intellect: / Cheerfully replied the wise Old Man: “He is gone to Hell.”’
34. Sinha, Raja Birbal.
35. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
36. Abu’l Fazl, The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1, trans. H. Blochmann (First published 1927; Low Price Publications, 2014).
37. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
38. On one of his journeys back from Kashmir, Akbar said, ‘It is forty years since I saw snow, and there are many men with me, born and bred in Hind, who have never seen it. If a snow-storm should come upon us in the neighbourhood of Pakhali, it would be a kind dispensation of Providence.’ Nizamuddin tells the story and writes that the snowstorm Akbar had wished for did occur. See Nizamuddin Ahmad, ‘Tabakat-i Akbari’, in The History of India, As Told by Its Own Historians, trans. H. M. Elliot, vol. 5 (Trübner and Co., 1873). It wasn’t only his men but also his elephants who struggled with his travels into unfamiliar terrain. Father Xavier of the third Jesuit mission to Akbar’s court provides this memorable description of an elephant negotiating its way uphill: ‘Sometimes, feeling insecure on its feet, owing to the load which it carried, it supported itself with its trunk, making it serve the purpose of a staff.’ See Fr. Pierre Du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits: An Account of the Jesuit Missions to the Court of Akbar, trans. C. H. Payne (First published 1926; Low Price Publications, 2008).
39. Vincent A. Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, 1542–1605 (Clarendon Press, 1917).
40. Jahangir, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, ed. and trans. W. M. Thackston (Oxford University Press with the Smithsonian Institution, 1999).
41. Banarasidas, Ardhakathanak (A Half Story), trans. Rohini Chowdhury (Penguin Books, 2009).
42. ‘The Happy Sayings of His Majesty’, in Abu’l Fazl, The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 3.
43. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
44. Every city and district of the empire had ‘vigilant and truthful men’ appointed to prevent ‘forcible burning’, writes Abul Fazl (The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3).
45. Ibid.
46. Jahangir, The Jahangirnama.
47. Stephen Dale, Babur: Timurid Prince and Mughal Emperor, 1483–1530 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). There is a wonderful example of the family’s respect for elder women from Jahangir’s life. Gulrukh Begum, daughter of Kamran and widow of the equally ill-fated Mirza Ibrahim, had eventually reconciled herself to Akbar’s ascendancy and joined his court. She had even asked for her daughter to marry the eldest prince, Salim. Years later, when Salim ruled as Jahangir, he went to visit his mother-in-law. At the emperor’s arrival, Gulrukh gave him a robe of honour. It was a complete inversion of the usual protocol but Jahangir, ‘preferring the observance of the code (Tora) to the maintenance of royal dignity, did obeisance and took the robe’. See Nawab Samsam-ud-Daula Shah Nawaz Khan and Abdul Hayy, The Maathir-ul-Umara: Biographies of the Muhammadan and Hindu Officers of the Timurid Sovereigns of India from 1500 to about 1780 AD, trans. Henry Beveridge, revision, annotation and completion Baini Prashad, vols 1 and 2 (The Asiatic Society, 1941, 1952).
48. Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, vol. 6, trans. W. M. Thackston.
49. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe.
50. Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Blackwell Publishing, 2004; Indian reprint by Wiley India, 2018).
51. If Akbar was influenced by his Rajput kin and allies’ investment of honour in their women, it is unclear if there was any reciprocal Central Asian influence on the Rajputs. Man Singh, for example, served in the Mughal court from the age of eleven; he was one of Akbar’s greatest generals and his nephew by marriage, and also Jahangir’s brother-in-law. Man Singh may have expanded the Mughal empire but he didn’t absorb any of the Mughals’ antipathy towards sati: when the Rajput amir died in 1614, sixty women burned with him. See Annemarie Schimmel, The Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (Reaktion Books, 2004, reprinted in 2010).
52. Ruby Lal, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
53. Ruby Lal, ‘Settled, Sacred and All-Powerful: Making of New Genealogies and Traditions of Empire under Akbar’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 36, no. 11, 17–23 March 2001.
54. The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1.
55. Mukhia, The Mughals of India.
56. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
57. Du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits. The painting was a copy of the Madonna from the Church of St Maria del Popolo, which is said to have miraculous powers. The Fathers had hung it up in their chapel in Agra for Christmas when news of its display reached Akbar and he asked to see it.
58. Nizamuddin Ahmad, ‘Tabakat-i Akbari’.
59. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
60. The Fathers had begun to suspect that all Akbar’s debates on religious matters were actually brainstorming sessions for a ‘new religion with matter taken from all the existing systems’ and they no longer wished to ‘give him the pearls of the Gospel to tread and crush under his feet’. See Monserrate, The Commentary of Father Monserrate.
61. Nephew of the better-known St Francis Xavier.
62. Du Jarric, Akbar and the Jesuits.
63. S. Roy, ‘Akbar’, in The Mughul Empire, ed. R. C. Majumdar (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1974).
64. Jahangir, The Jahangirnama.
65. The Ain-i-Akbari, vol. 1.
66. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
67. Ibid.
68. Translator’s note in The Akbarnama of Abul Fazl, vol. 3. Henry Beveridge writes that Murad also asked for books and was promised the forthcoming translation of the Mahabharata.
69. Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, trans. W. H. Lowe.
70. Ibid.
71. See Husain, The Nobility under Akbar and Jahangir.
72. Translator’s note in The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
73. The Akbarnama of Abu’l Fazl, vol. 3.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Mahomed Kasim Ferishta, History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India till the Year A.D. 1612, vol. 2, trans. John Briggs (R. Cambray & Co., 1909).
